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This Women’s Day, we want to shine a light on Joan Arwa Ogwang.
When Joan decided to open a solar bakery in Kisumu, Kenya, she had no experience in baking, no guarantee of success, and very little room for error. What she had was a Lytefire solar oven, an unshakeable work ethic, and the ability to find a solution to every obstacle, including being evicted from her workshop on Christmas Eve.
Three years later, she runs East Africa’s first profitable solar bakery. Nine employees. 400kg of baked goods a month. A revenue growth of 180% in one year. And a second outlet opened last year.
Women like Joan build proof that sustainable solar bakeries are real.
Happy International Women’s Day. 🌍🧡
#WomensDay #Empowerment #SolarBakery #Africa #Lytefire
Picture: Maxime Moreau
From Manon, fondatrice de Fourmi
Le temps des bilans est terminé !
Regarder ce qui est passé avec un regard neuf : nos grandes avancées, nos réussites mais aussi les difficultés rencontrées et les défis relevés 💪 Un travail qui demande du temps mais tellement essentiel pour se projeter dans l’année qui nous attend !
L’année 2025 a été notamment marqué par :
– la fin de notre expérimentation : pasteuriser des bocaux appertisés à la chaleur directe du soleil ☀️ grâce aux outils développés par Lytefire, qui acte le lancement officiel de la première #conserverie #solaire de France 😃
– notre installation à Saint-Grégoire à côté de Rennes 🚀 grâce à une belle rencontre avec Les Vergers de l’Ille. Un grand merci pour votre accueil bienveillant !
– notre première saison estivale de transformation de légumes "à façon" pour nos producteurs bio 🍆🧅🍅 Infiniment reconnaissante pour les 10 producteurs qui nous ont fait confiance dès le départ 🙏
– le lancement de la marque Fourmi, la conserverie low-tech à l’automne et les premiers accueils enthousiastes de nos clients particuliers et professionnels ! Notre plus grande satisfaction 🤗
– des stages d’initiation bien lancés maintenant avec un taux de remplissage de (presque) 100 % 🎉 mais surtout un niveau de satisfaction excellent de nos apprentis conserveurs. Merci pour vos retours qui nous portent et nous confortent pour la suite. 🫶
Nos grands défis pour 2026 :
– développer un réseau de distributeurs engagés dans l’alimentation durable à Rennes et alentours pour la revente de notre gamme : caves, épiceries, guinguettes, cafés, boulangeries, fromageries, traiteurs, drives fermiers, magasins de producteurs... Si vous avez des idées, partagez-le moi en commentaire 😉
– proposer davantage de stages d’initiation auprès des entreprises / CSE pour toujours plus de liens et de convivialité au sein des équipes 🤝
– mettre au point notre première journée d’immersion au sein d’une conserverie solaire 😎 pour répondre à ces nombreuses sollicitations de curieux et curieuses ! Bref, inspirer pour montrer que d’autres voies sont possibles 🔀
Si vous voulez aider Fourmi a créé sa fourmilière en 2026 : aimez, partagez, commentez 🤩 | 12 comments on LinkedIn
Yesterday I was at the UN in Geneva, speaking at the round table for energy sovereignty as part of the Mont Blanc Meetings on the ESS Forum International. For over 20 years I’ve believed in cooperatives as one of the best ways to do good, impactful business. With Lytefire we’ve been starting up and supporting many cooperatives, especially solar bakeries in East and West Africa. I’m sharing the first part of my notes:
Thierry Jeantet assured me that the cooperative hot spots of Emilia-Romagna and Trentino in Italy are as strong today as they were when I had a look at them 20 years ago. The cooperative landscape is "different", adapting, but very active.
It is estimated that a third of the GDP in Emilia-Romagna is produced by cooperatives. Gianluca Salvatori has been at the forefront of the research with Euricse, based out of their headquarters in Trento. These regions could be a model for a more just economy.
Alain Coheur said in the current political climate the #SSE and cooperatives are at threat as they stand for democratic institutions where local people can participate. A cooperative is a mini-democracy giving people agency. Fostering a culture of participation. It’s a lived democracy. And it is more than just voting. Being an co-owner. Taking responsibility but also getting a return. SSE and cooperatives are the opposite of and incompatible with totalitarianism. Are they at threat? Are they the solution?
Oliver Röpke reiterated: It’s about sovereign nations, but this needs sovereign people. Cooperatives can provide a basis for this. Renewable energy has the potential for this. To reduce dependence, to reinforce sovereignty. That’s the reason for calling the next panel bridging cooperatives with renewable energies.
In the panel, we discussed that cooperatives have something to bring to the table in terms of affordability: When the customer is a stakeholder, prices are fair. About small vs big: Instead of chasing growth, cooperative size is based on actual markets and needs. Cooperatives federate rather than monopolize. We were able to link this to the work we do with Lytefire in different contexts: Make bread more affordable. Give people a sustainable income. Reduce energy dependency, and use the newly created autonomy to boost local democratic processes and economies.
I hope I’ll find time to cover the rest of my notes as well. The last discussion of the day was this: We must actively learn to cooperate again. In the past, we teamed up by agreeing on a few big things. We left the details to be sorted further down the line. Today, we get polarized not on the big things, but on the details. Something to watch out for. Maybe another field where we can turn our attention to how cooperatives tackle that...
Thank you Anthony R. for bringing us to the table.
We have been following the work of UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Olivier De Schutter for a while. At the time, he was one of the rare voices in Europe to highlight the dead ends of the industrial agricultural system.
In July 2024, the Special Rapporteur presented his report Eradicating poverty beyond growth (A/HRC/56/61) to the Human Rights Council, calling for a decisive shift away from growth-dependent development strategies and towards a human rights economy that places the well-being of people and the planet at the centre of economic transformation.
The report set out the why (why such a shift is needed) and the what (what such a shift entails).
After that, a consultation gathered 160 submissions from UN agencies, Member States, academic experts, and civil society organizations.
We have humbly contributed to it with the Solar Fire Bakery (Kenya) and the Smart Up Solar Bakery (Uganda) case studies.
Building on all the contributions, the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth now provides the how: a comprehensive set of concrete measures to make the shift happen.
The recommendations are structured around five pillars (see image) and presented on the New Economies for Eradicating Poverty (NEEP) platform, led by Olivier De Schutter (link in comment).
We are grateful to Mr De Schutter’s team and all participants. We cannot wait to see this work growing and spreading.
We agree with Andrew Fanning: "I think this is one of the most important and urgent global initiatives on economic transformation of our times — dive in!"
#solidarity
Thank you Suomen World Vision for this great article highlighting one of the new solar bakeries in Kenya.
" A bakery in the NGOSWET KUMMI PROJECT area in western Kenya started operating in the spring, where bread, cakes and biscuits are baked in a solar-powered oven.
The oven was developed by the Finnish company Lytefire and manufactured in Nairobi. The sun’s rays are directed into the oven using mirrors, which can raise the temperature to almost 300 degrees. The oven can also be used to dry fish or roast peanuts. In case of rainy and cloudy days, the oven can also be heated with charcoal. Five people work full-time at the solar bakery in Sego village. The bakery is run by a savings and loan group of entrepreneurial young people, to whom the bakery’s income is directed. Members can take out loans to start their own business or to cover unexpected expenses, such as illness.
In Ngoswet, the bakery’s products are mainly sold to schools. In the future, the aim is to have baked goods sold in shops in nearby towns. Cake crowns every celebration in Kenya, so there are orders for the Sun Bakery’s filled cakes in Ngoswet."
(link in comment)
#finland #suomi #kenya #solarbaking #artisans #solidarity
